The cyber insurance in Japan

The lives of people depend heavily on the computer system and its networks. Anonymous attackers and hackers terrify enterprises, organizations and governments into setting up the safety-nets by providing budgets and enacting some acts for protecting state secrets, trade secrets and personal information. Japan is no exception. When cyber attacks steal secrets, leak personal information, they cause lots of damage to countries, governments and enterprises. Thus, there is the need for the cyber insurance for covering damages and expenses arising from cyber attacks. There are two kinds of the cyber insurances: the first one is the first-party insurance, which is similar to property insurance, and the second one is the third-party insurance, which is similar to liability insurance. At least the original Japanese non-life insurance company has no insurance for specializing cyber attacks. Namely, the cyber insurance in Japan has the same nature as traditional property insurance and traditional liability insurance. As anonymous attackers and hackers target enterprises, organizations and governments, it is seemed proper that its government takes these countermeasures for its attacks and hacks. According to the traditional understanding of the first-party insurance, in the case an insurer pays insurance money to insured, the insurer has the subrogation right to a tort-feasor and subrogates an insured's right of making a claim from a tort-feasor. But in the cyber insurance, the subrogation right is meaningless because the insurer cannot identify a tort-feasor. This phenomenon causes a question of whether the subrogation right is an essential of property insurance or not.